When the Konohana Family Farm was established around 16 years ago in the shadow of Japan’s picturesque Mount Fuji, its handful of founding members did not even know that the concept of an eco-village existed.

Today, this sustainable community is home to more than 60 people who cultivate over 250 rice and vegetable crops across 16 hectares in Shizuoka prefecture’s Fujinomiya City, 2.5 hours west of Tokyo.

Furthermore, Konohana’s organic, seasonal, vegetarian and bio-diverse agricultural practices are now being taught to fledgling eco-villages in Japan and across the Asia-Pacific.

Environmental scientist Michiyo Furuhashi (featured in the video brief that accompanies this article) joined this ‘family’, whose relationships are based more on kindredness of spirit than genetic connections, back in 2007.

“The previous work I did was very interesting, but in the end I felt that practicing a sustainable lifestyle was more important than gaining a steady income. That’s the reason why I joined Konohana,” she told Our World 2.0.

“I felt that practicing a sustainable lifestyle was more important than gaining a steady income.”

Furuhashi is now a certified eco-village trainer. She recently attended the 4th International Eco-Village Conference held in Tokyo in May 2010, along with participants from the United States, the Philippines, India, China and Korea, among other countries. Together with one of Konohana’s founders, Isadon, she shared her knowledge on how to build and maintain a sustainable community from the ground up.

Eco-villages growing

The term eco-village first appeared in 1991 thanks to astrophysicist-cum-sustainability expert Dr. Robert Gilman who defined it as a:

human-scale

full-featured settlement

in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world

in a way that is supportive of healthy human development and can be successfully continued into the indefinite future.

Not that Furuhashi, who is also the Global Eco-village Network (GEN) representative in Japan, gets too caught up in definitions herself.

“Many people ask me what the definition of eco-village is but I think there is no clear definition. For example, some mansions [high-rise apartment buildings] that are concerned with the environment can be considered eco-villages; a cluster of eco-buildings can be called eco-village; a community like ours can call ourselves an eco-village.”

In 2008, GEN President Jonathan Dawson estimated that there were 1,500 eco-villages worldwide. These can be found in both the developed and developing worlds, but have evolved for different reasons, as illustrated in a special report by the Ecologist (PDF). In the global South, the authors found that adherents have a “desire to throw off the influence of industrialized nations and return to the values and practices of traditional cultures.”

In places like Japan, however, Konohana and other communities have attracted citizens, often skilled and educated, disillusioned with a modern society driven by conspicuous consumption and accumulating money. Konohana members include engineers, IT professionals and trades-people, as well as more vulnerable citizens including a group known in Japan as hikikomori or those who have ‘pulled away’ from mainstream society.

“Konohana and other communities have attracted citizens, often skilled and educated, disillusioned with a modern society driven by conspicuous consumption and the accumulation of money.”

Connected to nature, neighbours and the net

Konohana, however, is neither cut off from the outside world, nor suspicious of technology, contrary to what some might associate with those who choose communal living. In fact, because of its online eco-village network activities, website and delivery service to over 100 regular customers who can order by fax or e-mail (buying the Farm’s excess produce to help the Family pay for electricity, transport fuel and farm equipment costs), the community has to be digitally literate.

Over a long period of time, Konohana has gained the wider local community’s trust because of the way it addresses Japan’s rural aging crisis. With an even spread of children, youth, middle-aged and older people, it has the people-power and knowledge to cultivate what would otherwise be fallow rice and vegetable fields.

Conversely, Konohana has reaped benefits from its location in a depopulating area. Neighbouring farmland has been given to the Family, allowing it to harvest more as its numbers increase. They also use recycled tempura oil from local restaurants to fuel some of the Farm’s trucks and equipment.

Konohana also has good relationships with the local government. This is not surprising given that it attracted more than 2,000 Japanese and overseas guests to the area in 2009. Most came to do a spot of WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and every year, a few even decide to stay.

Footprint facts

Konohana’s collective carbon, and more importantly, ecological footprints are very low.

“A community life will save energy and reduce the overall environmental burden,” Furuhashi explains.

Although different measurement systems exist, the most prominent is put forward by the Global Footprint Network (GFN). They define an ecological footprint as a measure of “how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resource it consumes and to absorb its wastes, using prevailing technology”.

According to GFN’s research, if everyone on Earth was to live like an American, the world would require up to five planets. Konohana, using a similar measurement scale, claim that their average per capita footprints are 0.8, in comparison to the Japanese average of 2.4.

“Cuba and North Korea also have per capita ecological footprints of 0.8. But if you look at our family’s lifestyle, we have abundant wealth and resources — we have plenty of food and a bunch of clothes. We live a very rich life,” Furuhashi believes.

It is reasonable to ask to what extent this community is sustainable given that members like Furuhashi and Isadon expend energy by flying, albeit occasionally, across Asia and the world to participate in international eco-village events. The community explains firstly that such travel is necessary in order to educate others, and secondly that only a few of the Family’s members do so, as part of their duties, on behalf of others who barely have any carbon footprint.

Moving forward

While many might be attracted to a lifestyle in harmony with nature, the truth is that joining an eco-village could require giving up some of the luxuries that a more individualistic lifestyle provides, such as individual possessions, food choices and personal space.

So, what does Furuhashi miss, if anything, from her previous lifestyle?

“Sometimes I feel like I want a personal space. But in terms of personal property, I feel nothing wrong with not having my own since I can share everything with others.”

“For example if I have bought a book, I do not read it day after day. Others can read it and improve their knowledge and that makes me feel happy, you know,” she explains.

Authors

Mark Notaras was a writer/editor of Our World 2.0 for the United Nations University (UNU) Media Centre from 2009–2012. He is a former researcher in Peace and Security for the UNU Institute for Sustainability and Peace (UNU-ISP). He holds a Masters in International Affairs (Peace and Conflict Studies) from the Australian National University and the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and in 2013 completed a Rotary Peace Fellowship at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Currently Mark works in Timor-Leste advising local NGOs on community agriculture and conflict prevention projects.

Megumi Nishikura’s life purpose is to use the power of media to enlighten and inspire individuals to make choices that build a more positive sustainable world. She has been producing documentary films addressing global issues since 2003.

Join the Discussion

AlanZulch

Now THAT was truly inspiring!! So many things are deeply attractive about Konohana…it makes me want to visit. And a few things conjure fears…like having sufficient personal space, learning how to share, and making decisions by consensus or at least communally. Modern humans steeped on individuality have a lot to re-learn as we move into the new paradigm.Overall, I imagine the benefits far outweigh the costs…and for many people, even if they don’t now they probably will in the perhaps-not-so-distant future. It surely feels like this is where we’re headed.Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Konohana’s eco-village model expands throughout Japan as a way to revitalize satoyama and satoumi in coming years.Incidentally, speaking of founders of the eco-village movement, for those wanting to get a sense of what living in an eco-village is like, I highly recommend checking out my cousin Liz Walker’s book, Ecovillage at Ithaca (http://ecovillageithaca.org/evi/). Liz has been this eco-village’s executive director since she co-founded it in 1991 and she knows her stuff.In fact, I will bet that Liz knows Furuhashi-san and others at Konohana since she has traveled to Japan for GEN meetings and other related visits.Thank you, Megumi and Mark, for a great introduction to Japanese eco-villages. I can see they’re ripe for growth and my mind is already churning with ideas.

Kaljit

Amazing! Im ready to do it

Gugutala

I’m an architect in Brazil and since 2003, study techniques, low impact buildings, and permaculture.
I lived in Okinawa Japan 1 year.The this initiative is very important. Gambari

Mariakiaorasan

Mariakiaorasan – My husband, me and our six children lived in Japan for 6 years we are kiwis from New Zealand I know of other families from our country who have lived in Japan a lot longer than we did - 4 of our sons returned to Asia on volunteer missions and some of us returned a few times for visits since 1997 and continue to do so - each time we love to return to the villages - we lived in the country of Kato-gun Hyogo ken and lose ourselves in the presents of our tight knit village friends who welcome us with open arms and who have always lived in accordance to eco-environmental friendly practices of their culture which made us feel at home as our native Maori ways and practices in the common understanding of our ways were similar - even as we live in the modern catastrophies of the world – Now back in our country we have carried out some of our traditional ways especially in our tribal areas and the turnaround for most of us will not be much of a surprise as we have held on to the dream of our village Marae ways which is coming in handy today among many of us – so most of us welcome back the traditional living with the utilization of our land use with some technology to educate and our people are always welcome back to Marae our village eco- traditional home dotted all around our beautiful country of Aotearoa – New Zealand.

Sohrab Saran

Very inspiring! Congratulations to all those who had the courage to live in the eco-villages!
My thoughts for an ideal sustainable community/eco-village:
- Equal division of land and other natural resources. No one owns any land. Everyone gets a similar sized piece of land upon membership. They may revocably donate part of this land to the community.
- Needs to coexist with existing laws of the land (though that makes acquiring land for starting such a community very difficult financially!)
- Sustainable especially in terms of energy and population
- Should aim for an increasingly better quality of life through use of advances in technology. May need decades of research and new tech advances (3D printers anyone?) because we have become so specialized that many don’t know how to survive for long far from ‘civilization’ that has a vast array of highly specialized professionals. That in turn makes starting a small sustainable community difficult.
- No compromise on communication with the outside world especially Internet connectivity, right from the start.

- No compromise on health, hygiene, law & order, right from the start.

What governments can do:
- Create zones of land reserved for sustainable eco-villages
- To allow city-dwellers to migrate to these eco-villages, enact laws that enforce organizations to allow people to work without coming to office wherever possible (assuming communication connectivity is not a concern). This in turn would reduce the huge waste of energy commuting to and from work.

http://www.ourworld.unu.edu/ Carol S

Nice summary, thanks Sohrab. And laid out so succinctly it makes one wonder what we’re waiting for, doesn’ it?